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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Madam President, have you ever gone out to eat at a restaurant with a group of people, but your order was cheaper than everyone else's? Maybe you weren't as hungry or the restaurant the group picked was more expensive than you could afford so you were selective about what you ordered. Then, when the check comes, someone suggested the group split it evenly.

Now, what is your immediate reaction? You are upset, of course, because you ordered the salad not the filet mignon or you drank water, not the expensive bottle of wine. You ordered what you wanted, and they ordered what they wanted; you shouldn't be on the hook for their cost.

Sadly, this illustration is far too real, as last month, Joe Biden announced that he would cancel billions of dollars in student loans.

Now, let's be clear. He isn't canceling student debt. No, he is transferring that debt to every American taxpayer. Now a construction worker in Florida is having to foot the bill for the loans of a Harvard grad, which they voluntarily accepted for an education they received.

So here is what Democrats are trying to say to that construction worker: You didn't go to college; Democrats don't care. You will pay the debt of lawyers and doctors, and you will pay for those who want Ph.D.s in poetry. Talk about poetic injustice. You went to community college or a State school and worked to graduate debt-free. Tough luck. Joe Biden wants you to pay for the advanced degrees of the privileged few. Your tax dollars are now the money pot for other people's student debt.

Of course, Joe Biden's plan doesn't even begin to address the real reason for rising higher education costs. That is universities' decades-long practice of unnecessarily raising tuition.

As Governor of Florida, I addressed that problem and challenged our universities to keep education affordable.

Look at the University of Florida. Undergraduate tuition and fees for this academic year are less than $6,500. It is the fifth best public university in the country. You will get a fantastic education there. Meanwhile, at Harvard, tuition fees for an academic year cost more than $57,000.

There are ways to make education affordable, but the Democrats and elites aren't interested in those solutions. That is why Joe Biden is engaging in this reckless move even though it doesn't solve the real issue and even though he lacks the proper constitutional authority.

Everybody knows this. That is why, in July of last year, Nancy Pelosi herself denied that the President had such power.

She said:

The president can't do it . . . That's not even a discussion.

Yet now the Department of Justice is engaging in interpretive gymnastics to co-opt legislation that was passed to help our servicemembers in the aftermath of 9/11. It is a desperate attempt to stretch a good law well beyond its intent so that Joe Biden can give handouts to his liberal voters and Harvard pals.

Biden wants to spend money that Congress has not appropriated for a loan forgiveness that Congress has not authorized. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is a gross abuse of authority, and I won't stand for it. Congress must assert its authority here. We have the power of the purse, not the President.

That is why I have introduced the Debt Cancellation Accountability Act. My bill would require the Department of Education to get an express appropriation from Congress before they could propose waiving, discharging, or reducing student loan debt to two or more borrowers in an amount greater than $1 million. If we want to transfer the debt of some and make everyone pay for it, then Congress has to make that decision.

We should simply put it up for a vote. Of course, the Democrats here in the Senate won't do that. Surely, they could have passed a bill by now if they had really wanted to, but they wanted Biden to do it alone. It is easy to see why. In just the past few weeks, we have heard families from across the country speaking out against Biden's unfair and disastrous proposal. I am hearing about it from Floridians every day, and I know my colleagues are too.

I would like to thank Senators Barrasso, Lummis, and Braun for supporting my Debt Cancellation Accountability Act and for choosing to stand with me against Biden's overreach.

Let's pass this bill today to reverse Joe Biden's unlawful decision and force Congress to decide this issue.

Before I ask for unanimous consent, I would like to turn to my colleague Senator Braun from the great State of Indiana.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. I am so thankful for Senator Braun's support on this bill and for all of the work he has done to raise awareness about Biden's reckless spending agenda and to stand for fiscal sanity.

4483 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, so let's remember what we are talking about here. We are not canceling debt; we are transferring debt. We are transferring the debt because this obligation doesn't go away. Somebody still owes this money.

What we are saying is, people who decided--they made the choice--to go to college or go to some higher education, they are not going to have to pay their debt. And people who didn't and already paid off their debt, they are going to pay for it.

My colleague from Massachusetts never acknowledged the example. We all remember when we went out to dinner and we didn't spend the most money and how somebody suggested that, oh, let's just share it. So we paid for the expensive wine, and we paid for the expensive meal. That is not fair.

When you talk to Americans around the country, and they say: Would you like to forgive all the debt? Absolutely. Free is great.

But when you say: You are going to pay for it, they say: Absolutely not. Why would I pay off the debt for somebody else?

Let's remember just what my bill does. It doesn't say we can't forgive student loans; it says that Congress ought to decide if we do it. This is going to cost up to $1 trillion.

I don't think we ought to, so-called, transfer this debt, but my bill will at least give us a chance to have a debate on it. But that is not what my colleague wants to do.

I hope my colleague understands that her objection is absolutely a slap in the face to all those workers in Massachusetts and around the country who didn't go to college: construction workers, small business owners, chefs, flight attendants, firefighters, landscapers, and so many other groups of people who have made the decision not to pursue a higher education for whatever reason.

There are many others who worked hard to get scholarships or those who worked part time to afford college or plenty others who took the time to pay off their loans. I am going to stand with those people, working-class people--people who are responsible, hard-working Americans who absolutely are willing to pay off their obligations.

I think about people like my dad. My dad had a sixth grade education. He was a truckdriver. He worked his tail off. I can't imagine what he would think about working hard every day, then being forced to pay for some other person's degree as a doctor or a lawyer. He would be beside himself. He would think it was so unfair.

It is not how the real world works. It is a Democrat fantasyland that Joe Biden is trying to turn into reality.

People used to take pride in paying off their debts and working hard to see their commitments come through. Democrats want to destroy that and destroy ideas of fiscal responsibility. They want to forget that we are $30 trillion in debt. They want to forget that we still have record-high inflation as a result of wasteful spending.

My colleague wants to pretend that we are in this fantasyland because objecting to my bill is an endorsement of Biden's reckless plan and his unconstitutional debt transfer, from the overachiever, to the Harvard grad, to the working class.

As Members of Congress, we should be interested in checks and balances and the separation of powers. We should guard the powers of the Constitution that is especially reserved for the legislative branch. Spending a trillion dollars with no congressional oversight is wrong. That is not exactly how our Constitution was set up. This shameless decision to block my bill is just another example of how far Senate Democrats will go to appease the radical left.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, first off, my colleague never addressed the issue that this is a transfer of obligation. I mean, you can have a conversation about what we should have done with regard to tax cuts in the past, but this is a transfer of obligation. This is a transfer of obligation of people who decided to go to school.

We should do everything we can to help people, but we are not addressing the problem here. I addressed it when I was Governor. When I became Governor in January of 2011, tuition in Florida was going up 15 percent a year, plus inflation. I stopped it. We didn't see tuition increase while I was Governor, and we became the No. 1 higher education system in the country according to U.S. News & World Report.

We solved the problem of the cost of higher education to make sure people could afford education. We did it because we invested, we kept tuition low, and we paid our universities based on three things: do you get a degree, how much money you make, and what does it cost to get a degree. So, guess what, all of our universities became more efficient and more accountable.

That is how you fix the problem. This does not fix the problem. This does nothing to reduce tuition. This does nothing to hold our universities accountable. This does nothing to stop our universities from raising tuition. This does nothing to require our universities to make sure our kids get a job. This does nothing to make sure our kids get good-paying jobs.

So I am very disappointed in my colleague in that she would still not address the issue that that is a complete transfer of obligation from some people who decided to go get a higher education to people who decided not to.
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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Are you finished?

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Absolutely. I did everything I could to make sure all of our students had the opportunity to go to school. We made sure that they could afford to go to school.

What I have said in my bill today is this ought to be done by Congress. And let's don't just do some blanket transfer of obligations here. Congress should be doing this. This is going to cost us up to $1 trillion, and we are going to have people like my dad, if he was still alive--a truckdriver with a sixth-grade education--pay for some Ivy League kid to go to school, and that is wrong.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I am not suggesting you shouldn't borrow money, but what I am suggesting is, if you do borrow money, you made that decision, all right? You shouldn't transfer it to somebody like my dad, who had a sixth-grade education, couldn't afford to go to school, didn't go to school. There shouldn't be a transfer to make sure they pay off your debt. That is a decision you make. You should pay it off.

Now, if you have an issue because you can't pay it, let's deal with that issue. That is not what this does. This says, whatever your issues, Joe Biden says, by himself, without any act of Congress--he gets to make a decision by himself: Poof, your debt goes away; somebody else picks it up. That is not right.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, well, first off, let me make sure my colleague from Vermont knows my background. I actually grew up in public housing, born to a single mom. I do care about people, making sure you can get an education. That is why I did exactly what I did in Florida. I made sure people had the opportunity to get ahead.

The 4 years before I became Governor of Florida, the State lost 832,000 jobs. By cutting taxes and reducing the regulations and streamlining things, we added 1.7 million jobs so people all over my State could get a job. That is how people get ahead. You don't get ahead by just somebody transferring obligations from one person to somebody else. That improves a few people's lives, but that is completely unfair. That is not how this country was set up, that some people are going to pay for somebody else's obligation that they decided to pick up, and that is all I am talking about.

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I think who paid for Jeff Bezos's yacht is all the people who bought packages from Amazon. And by the way, if you do get one that says ``Made in China,'' I hope everybody will send it back.

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